Business re-engineering can have a ‘happy ending’ if well implemented. Business Process Management (BMP) can refer to a method of aligning efficiently a company with the needs and wants of a specific client. It is a holistic approach of management that aims at promoting business effectiveness as well as efficiency while still striving for flexibility, innovation, and integration with technology (Keith,2000). As a company tries to strive to attain its goals and objectives, Business Process Management attempts to momentarily improve processes. Within the business process management, technology and people are the most important in enhancing performance in a business. Business process management is viewed by some people as a business philosophy. Alignment of BPM to a customer may be taken to mean that customers facing the staff are best placed to understand the needs of a customer and ought to be empowered to make enhancements (Anita, 2001). Most of these enhancements need can take place without the need for new technology.
Technological business process management is thought to be service-oriented architecture. By bringing to the company’s employees the power of technology, one would be enhancing performance in the organization. A business process can be defined as a collection of related and structured activities that usually produces a product or a service that meet the requirement needs of a company’s client (Jacinta, 2001). These processes are usually very critical to any company as they are said to generate a lot of revenue. Business Process Management activities can be categorized into 5 groups, design, modeling, execution, monitoring, and optimization. Process design encompasses identifying the existing processes and then designing the process to be process design reduces the number of challenges over the process lifetime (John,1999).
This step of design is aimed at ensuring a correct and efficient theoretical design is well prepared. The design could be inhuman to a system, human to human, or system to system. It may also target various fields like the market, regulatory, or challenges faced by the firm(Jacinta, 2001). Modeling involves introducing the theoretical design to determine how the process will operate in different circumstances. There is the need to develop or even buy an application that will execute the required steps of the processes (John,1999). These applications, however, do not execute all the designed steps of the process completely especially practically. Monitoring involves dealing with an individual process so that information on each of the processes can be analyzed statistically for its performance. Optimization is the last category that involves decoding the process performance information or analysis from the modeling phase and come up with the potential rooms and bottlenecks for other improvements then apply them in the design stage thus continuing with the cycle of Business Process Management(Anita, 2001).
Software engineering in recent times has developed on the improvement of the software development process. The end results range from structured analysis to component and domain analysis and objective-oriented analysis. These are important in coming up with new systems that either replace the old ones or maintain them. Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) can be taken to mean a management approach that focuses on improving an organization by means of uplifting efficiency and the effectiveness of the process that already exists in the firm(Jacinta, 2001). It is kind of a systematic transformation of existing systems and replacing them with new systems to realize improved quality in systems capabilities, operation, performance, functionality, or evolvability at cheap cost, the risk to the customer and schedule. It emphasizes enhancing already existing systems with a greater return of improvement (John,1999). As development aims at implementing new abilities, improving the functionality, and also making remarkable enhancements by using computer resources as well as incorporating new software technologies, re-engineering aims at expanding the two activities and exhibiting their characteristics. Although a close relative, Business Process Re-engineering seeks radical rather than continuous improvement(Jacinta, 2001).
It (Business Process Re-engineering) usually escalates the efforts of Just-In-Time (JIT) and Total Quality Management (TQM) to make the process a strategic tool for an organization’s competence. This concept of re-engineering can be traced back to the 19th century and was used to optimize productivity. It is used by most organizations on the brink of disaster to reduce cost and return to profitability(Anita, 2001). The dangerous part of it is that while undergoing this process, an organization may slash its capacity for its future growth. To get lasting benefits, organizations must be willing to analyze how strategies and reengineering complement each other byways of accepting ownership of strategies throughout the company, analyzing the current capabilities of the organization and its process realistically, and also linking budgeting processes into the strategies. In as much as there are more benefits of re-engineering, it has a few limitations in that it struggles to “fight its own demons” in that it fails to cope up with its competitors especially in offering new services and goods(Jacinta, 2001).
According to Peter Aiken and Bill Girling, many current organizations have unstable data systems what they called un-integrated and brittle legacy data systems. For an organization to be efficient and reap high benefits, need to integrate an effective data system(Keith,2000). Re-engineering and other BPM analyzes produce a “happy ending”. Re-engineering lowers the cost of production (John,1999). This has been justified by a number of US projects that have adopted Re-engineering systems. Since Re-engineering is based on increasing the improvement of systems rather than replacing systems radically, it thus lowers the risk of losing essential business knowledge. Through the use of the Re-engineering process, the already existing employee can be maintained and develop their new skills. thus the existing skills of the employee evolve as the system evolves. This will lessen the risks and expenses that are associated with hiring new employees(Keith,2000). BPR help in the revelation of business rules in that when a system is re-engineered the business rules embedded in the system are re-discovered especially in exceptional rules.
Re-engineering is flexible in that an organization can carry out its Re-engineering as the budget and resources allow them thus can be carried out in stages(Keith,2000). An already existing company has workable operational systems thus the employee is in a position to adapt to the re-engineered systems. It involves also radical redesigning of business procedures aiming at the better improvement in business performance(Jacinta, 2001). It can be measured relative speed, cost service, and quality. It focuses on the need to rethink and rework organizational structures totally. The benefits of Business Process Re-engineering can be very many if only they are well implemented(Anita, 2001). With the development of networks of computers, businessmen can attain huge gains in productivity. To reap such huge benefits, technological enhancement ought to be combined with appropriate managerial changes as well as organizational structures and more so the redefining and reorganization of work practice.
BPR challenges all the old organizational procedures as well as organizational cultural values. it undermines the procedures and the processes. In short, it is actually a re-invention of business processes as compared to enhancement or improvement. There are many options for enhancing business processes that range from complete re-engineering to adopting new management process methodologies or even adding new processes to already existing systems. Establishing a continuous improvement process could be the best investment an organization can make. A business process is made transparent by business process management. this improves the visibility and efficiency of a company(Anita, 2001). It can show where there are delays during transactions. the exercise of configuration and designing together with data that emerges after running certain processes for at least some time can allow refinement. Another advantage of using BPM is the centralization of data. Any transaction can be logged in and be retrieved when required. Referencing data is also made very easy.
In a general conclusion, viewing the impact of implementing business process management effectively as in the case of Peter Aiken & Bill Grill BPR can have a ‘happy ending’. Business Process Re-engineering includes Business Process Redesign, Business Process Change Management, or Business Transformation (John,1999). It is kind of a systematic transformation of existing systems and replacing them with new systems to realize improved quality in systems capabilities, operation, performance, functionality, or inviolability at cheap cost, the risk to the customer, and schedule. It emphasizes enhancing already existing systems with a greater return of improvement. Business Process Management (BMP) can refer to a method of aligning efficiently a company with the needs and wants of a specific client. Business Process Management activities can be categorized into 5 groups, design, modeling, execution, monitoring, and optimization.
Process design encompasses identifying the existing processes and then designing the process to be process design reduces the number of challenges over the process lifetime. Modeling involves introducing the theoretical design to determine how the process will operate in different circumstances. There is the need to develop or even buy an application that will execute the required steps of the processes. These applications, however, do not execute all the designed steps of the process completely especially practically. Monitoring involves dealing with an individual process so that information on each of the processes can be analyzed statistically for its performance. Optimization is the last category that involves decoding the process performance information or analysis from the modeling phase and come up with the potential rooms and bottlenecks for other improvements then apply them in the design stage thus continuing with the cycle of Business Process Management. The benefits of Business Process Re-engineering can be very many if only they are well implemented. With the development of networks of computers, businessmen can attain huge gains in productivity. R-engineering and other BPM systems produce a ‘happy ending’ to an organization.
References
Anita W. (2001) Business Process Management: Boston, London pp 23-56Howard G.(2005 ). Jacinta W, (2001) Business Process Management a re-engineering system, BookSurge Pub pp 67-103.
Keith H.(2000) “Business Process Management Systems” New York, pp 45-67.
John J (1999) “Business Process Management: Harvard University press Pp 23-56.